Jerry Craft

Jerry Craft is an American author and illustrator whose graphic novel New Kid (2019) won the Coretta Scott King Award and the Newbery Medal in 2020 — the first graphic novel to win the Newbery. New Kid is a semi-autobiographical story about Jordan Banks, a Black middle schooler who is the new kid at an elite private school, navigating the tensions between his Harlem neighbourhood and his new environment. Craft has been a working cartoonist and illustrator for decades, best known for his comic strip Mama's Boyz, which ran in newspapers for over twenty years. New Kid and its sequel Class Act (2020) became widely assigned in schools for their accessible and honest depictions of race, class, and belonging. Craft was born in New York City. He studied illustration at the School of Visual Arts and has worked in comics and children's book illustration throughout his career. His success with New Kid opened new conversations about the literary legitimacy of the graphic novel form in children's literature.